


close now: listen

by poalimal



Series: last days of summer [1]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Character Study, Complicated Relationships to U.S. Empire, F/F, F/M, Foreshadowing, Gen, Imprecise Gendering, Original Character(s), Parenthood, Preseries, Sexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-07-02 20:16:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15803823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poalimal/pseuds/poalimal
Summary: We order. While we wait, I ask Dr Nurse, 'What was the first poem you really remember? You mentioned reading a lot as a kid. What was the first poem that really electrified you, that completely changed your way of thinking?'Dr Nurse clearly stops to consider the question - but then he smiles. And I can tell by now when he is about to give me a softball answer.'The Cat in the Hat,' he says.





	close now: listen

 

Melissa Bailey was a practical woman. Several men in her life referred to her as a woman with 'her feet on the ground' - as if, she always thought, hearing this said, there were any other way to walk!

Men called her beautiful, heartbreaker, baby - she wasn't much moved. By the time she shipped out after grad school, she had kissed only three men in all her life. Her crisis of conscience hit hard, when it came, and when she returned home, honourably discharged, the third man was still waiting for her: Ian Nursé, a man who lived his life with his heart in his mouth.

She did not find his waiting very much romantic. In fact, if you'd asked her three months down the line what she thought about him, about relationships or love or just men in general, she probably would've said, 'Hell no! Not for me.' But she was still reeling, somehow. We'll say he caught her at a good time.

(Good for me, he joked later, bad for her.)

Her mother had mentioned something vaguely about marriage... and anyway, Melissa reasoned, if she were to fall in love with any man, it would've been with Ian, who lowered his voice and tilted his head whenever she was upset. Never mind his looks, his wealth; he had a gentle heart. She called him 'my lucky number three' just to see him smile.

 

* * *

 

At the beginning, you know, she really did think it was love.

 

* * *

 

So they were married. She had one child, Derek, perfectly, practically, on Valentine's Day - 'to avoid the rush,' she said, drily - and he was world enough for her.

And so she did not, she told Ian when he asked, want anymore children. Her parents knew how badly her husband wanted a houseful of kids - but more than that, they knew her, they knew what a practical woman she was, they knew that she knew how to cede and retreat when the losses were too great. They joked, they teased, they chided, and they tried to do her husband's work for him.

'When you gonna give me a little granddaughter to dote on?' her mother kept asking, during one massive family reunion, pumpkin patch cousins from all across the country spread out across the vine. Should he start wearing dresses, Derek asked later, sitting in Melissa's lap, to make Gramma happy?

And this was when Melissa knew that all the love in her heart couldn't be divvied up any further, that she would give all the love she had to spare, and even the love she did not have to spare, to her one and only child. She told him he could dress as he liked.

All week long, Derek wore his cousins' old dresses, no matter how they laughed and teased and taunted him. He laughed with them, he teased them back, his smile was taunt enough. His hair Melissa had let grow long enough to braid, and he jumped higher, climbed further, and screamed louder than Tyquarius-Tyeena-SammyJo-and-Gina-Nessa-Tone-and-Tina-Kyle-Kayla-Kiki-Mercedes-and-Mashon. And Derek was so daring, so sweet and unaffected, that by the weekend both her parents were calling him 'Ricky-sweetheart', all one long fond word. That was the last time they pushed Melissa about more kids.

So Melissa and Derek returned to their house in Connecticut. Ian was in Shanghai, finalising the arrangements for their next move - but that was nothing new, the two of them having the house to themselves. Derek was hungry after the long drive up, so Melissa set to making him a snack while she let the messages play.

Her mother had called to make sure they'd gotten home ok, her father had called to confirm the same, her middle sister had called to let them know they'd left a dress behind, and should they send it up to the house?, her oldest brother had called to arrange for the kids to get together again in a months' time--

And Sawda had called.

I have come, my friend  
(she said)  
to speak with you  
of poetry and birds,  
these things alighting  
to the top of my heart.  
Can you hear them beating,  
hard into the wind?  
Close now: listen.

Derek could not speak Arabic - not then, at least. He watched his mother closely as she played the message again and again, smiling and on tip-toe. He could sense the tremors of change in her expression somehow, even if he couldn't fully understand the cause. He didn't know what to say to her.

He didn't recognise her as she stood there before him: a woman in love.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Bit nervous about this. Would love some feedback! Some notes:
> 
> \- This is my brief take on what is perhaps only a fanon theory? How Derek's mothers came to be together. Although, for all this lead-up, you never actually see them in one place lol.  
> \- A 'softball question' is, as I understand, a safe, easy question. So a 'softball answer' (which I don't believe is any kind of idiom) would be a safe, easy answer.  
> \- I think posting online offers certain unique opportunities, creatively. Lately I have been playing around with summaries as a separate part of story. In this the summary poses the question, 'What was the first poem that completely changed Derek's world?' The true answer, as in the fic, is Sawda's poem to Melissa, his mother.


End file.
